Garden lovers all over Britain have suffered a cascade of emails from the Eden Project in the past month, as the Cornish eco-domes campaigned to win £50m of lottery funding for their new "Edge" extension. The last message I received was a dignified concession of defeat to Sustrans, the cycle network, which finally triumphed in the phone/email vote, and which will benefit from the cash.
However this morning there have been reports
that Sustrans supporters didn't quite play fair... Well, honestly. I
don't know why everyone's up in arms about it. Did anyone genuinely
believe that cyclists - constitutionally incapable as we are of
standing still at a red light, without, at the very least, sneaking
forward over the line - were going to behave like English cricketing
gentlemen when it came to voting? (Actually, what am I saying, England
cricketers are fabulously cheaty
too.) Anyway it's not as if cycling along a path is going to preclude
there being nice flowers and trees to look at too, is it...
Nevertheless, I find myself wondering if is it actually right to
organise people to block-vote like that. And when there was quite that
much money at stake, shouldn't it all have been regulated a bit more
strictly? I have had quite enough of the story about the dodgy
phone-voting on TV, without Britain's eco-charities getting into
trouble for it too. Anyway - if you want to know what the Lottery is
actually going to pay for - here it is!
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